


Things Come Apart

by joely_jo



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-16
Updated: 2013-01-16
Packaged: 2017-11-25 18:48:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/641886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joely_jo/pseuds/joely_jo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During a harmless game, Jon Snow's real parentage is revealed, causing chaos throughout Winterfell. Jon and Catelyn must come to terms with the truth and decide what is really important to them after all. </p><p>Written for the got_exchange over at Livejournal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. JON

**Author's Note:**

> 'Things come apart so easily when they have been held together with lies.' - Dorothy Allison

It had been Bran’s idea to do the treasure hunt – it was the kind of thing he liked – and once the idea had been suggested, even Sansa stirred herself from her stitching and whispering to join in. Robb was going to write the clues, but Arya said that wasn’t fair because then his team would have an advantage, so instead, she dragged Maester Luwin from his tower to do it. The maester was obliging, and an hour later, he called all of them together, divided them into three teams – Robb, Theon and Sansa in one, Jon, Arya and Bran in the other – and gave the instructions out with a firm voice. Anyone caught cheating would forfeit the game, when you had figured out a clue, you were to leave it in the location you found it so it could be found by another player, and the first team back to the Maester’s Tower were the winners. 

Arya was so excited she could hardly stand still, and Bran’s little face was the picture of mirth, but Jon pulled them quickly to one side when the timer was turned over and hushed them. “We have to be sensible about this,” he told them in his most adult voice. “Robb has Theon and Sansa on his team, and they’re older and think they’re smarter--”

“Sansa is not smarter,” interrupted Arya, but received a sharp look for her remark and promptly dropped her head and shut up. 

“We’ve got to think carefully.” He unrolled the first clue, given to them by Maester Luwin, and studied it, before reading it aloud: “In this place of quiet, you’ll often find Lord Eddard. Look for something older than the walls of Winterfell itself.” 

“The Godswood, the Godswood!”

“Arya, shhh!” said Bran, annoyed. 

Jon put his finger to his lips too. “We don’t want to give them the answers. You know what Theon’s like… He’ll be hiding behind corners and listening in to us.” 

Arya duly quietened, but her enthusiasm was undimmed. She led the way at a breakneck speed to the Godswood and to the great white and red bulk of the weirwood tree under which Father often sat. Once there, she quickly spotted the next clue hanging by a thread from one of the branches, and so Bran squirrelled up and called down its contents to Jon below. “This is a place for meeting, and discussing, and talking with others. Your next clue awaits beneath a direwolf seal.” 

“Where’s that do you think?” asked Bran as he jumped down, his feet making a hollow thump on the spongy ground.

Jon frowned. He had an idea, but he was surprised by it as it was a place usually deemed out of bounds. “I think it is Father’s solar. That’s where he writes letters and takes people when he wants to talk with them alone.”

“Are we allowed to go in then?” Arya asked. “Father always makes us knock.”

Shrugging his shoulders, Jon replied, “Well, I don’t see how it could be anywhere else. Maester Luwin must have spoken to Father before he wrote the clue to check that it was acceptable. It will be on Father’s table or somewhere easy to spot like that.” 

That seemed a reasonable explanation and so they left the Godswood behind and headed for the solar. As they darted through the courtyard, Bran caught sight of Robb and Theon heading towards the kitchens, laughing, with Sansa skipping along beside them. “Quick,” he called to Jon and Arya. “They’re ahead of us!”

But they found the door to the solar shut. Arya was about to barge straight in, until Jon grabbed her by the collar of her dress and yanked her back. “Knock, then,” he told her. “We don’t even know if Father’s in there or not.”

Arya made a fist and knocked hard, but was greeted by silence. She glanced uncertainly at Jon, and then knocked again, a little louder this time. When no answer came for a second time, Jon stepped forward and pushed her out of the way with his shoulder. His hand fell to the latch and slowly, very slowly, he opened it. 

The door was heavy as he pushed it, but with a little effort, he swung it open to reveal the solar. It was a not a large room, but perhaps half a dozen men could have stood comfortably inside it. There was a diamond-paned window that looked out across the courtyard towards the Godswood and the room was dominated by the large oaken table with the direwolves carved into the corners which Lord Eddard sat behind when he was tending to business or meeting people. A fire burned low in the hearth and a detailed tapestry of the Stark family tree hung above the mantel – Jon knew from a recent visit that it had only just been updated following the birth of little Rickon ten moons ago. 

For a moment, he paused in the doorway, looking inside and feeling a little intimidated. He had never been in his Father’s solar other than when he had been summoned, and it felt strange to be standing on the threshold about to enter without leave. But then he felt Arya give him a bit of a shove and he stumbled inside.

He turned and frowned at her, but she just flashed him that ridiculously charming grin she had and shrugged her shoulders. “We’re not going to find the clue standing here are we?” she argued. 

“No,” he said, but even as he spoke, he had a feeling that they should probably be careful. “Bran, you stay outside and look for Father or anybody else coming in this direction. Give a whistle if you see anybody, yes?” 

Bran nodded and disappeared back out of the door and down the hallway, leaving Jon alone with Arya. “Where do we look first?” she asked, already standing on the other side of the table, her curious eyes flickering over the sheets of parchment and letters lying on show. She picked up a cup and peered inside, made a face, then set the cup back down again. 

“I don’t know.”

“There’s nothing here,” she said. “Just a bunch of letters and some blank parchment. I don’t see a clue.” Her eyes fell to the drawers beneath the table and she tugged the topmost one open. 

“Arya!” 

“What?”

“You can’t go just looking through Father’s things. He’ll be angry.” 

“He won’t know,” she said, ignoring his objections. “I’ll be careful, and I’ll put back anything that I move. Besides, Robb, Sansa and Theon have already been up here, haven’t they? And it didn’t bother them.”

That much was true, Jon realised, and the thought of being beaten into second place made his reluctance lessen. He was about to join her at the drawers when suddenly she held up a folded piece of parchment sealed with a piece of grey wax. The direwolf imprinted into the wax was obvious even from across the room. “I’ve got it!” she proclaimed. “What was the clue? ‘Your next clue awaits beneath a direwolf seal.’ It’s got to be this. It’s the only thing in the room with a direwolf seal.” She waved the parchment in his face. “Can I read it?” He nodded, and Arya made to run her finger beneath the seal, but stopped just before the wax broke. “Jon, it’s got your name on it…” Her voice was abruptly quiet and serious.

“My name?” 

“Yes, look…” She passed it to him. He frowned as he turned it over in his hands. The parchment was faded and starting to yellow, which seemed strange to him – the last clue had been written on fresh, bleached white parchment. 

“I don’t think this is the next clue.”

Arya came to stand beside him. Her eyes were twinkling. “That’s Father’s writing.” 

A sudden sense of mischief filled Jon, fuelled in part by the excitement of the treasure hunt and the fact that Arya with her hedonistic disregard for rules was standing right next to him, and he slid his finger deliberately underneath the seal and unfolded the parchment. His father’s neat, curling hand stared back at him from the paper. 

“What does it say?” Arya demanded. 

“Shh…” He began to read. 

He was no more than a paragraph in when he found himself physically staggering at the words he was reading and he reached for the high-backed chair his father usually sat in, using its weight to steady him before he crumpled into it. Arya seemed to instinctively know that something was amiss, for she peered over his shoulder and tried to read alongside him, but before she could get a glance at the words that were written he folded the parchment back up again and stuffed it into the pocket of his breeches. A lump had formed in his throat, threatening to cut off his breath and he swallowed to try to shift it. In his pocket, it felt almost as if the letter was burning into his skin. “Arya, this isn’t the clue. We’re in the wrong place.”

“The wrong place?” she questioned. 

“Yes. Take Bran and go back to look at the clue in the Godswood. I think we’ve got to think again.” 

She frowned at him in confusion. “Aren’t you coming too?” 

“No,” he replied. “I don’t want to play anymore.” 

Arya was about to protest, but he shook his head at her and she seemed to realise that there was something troubling him, so she let him be and walked from the solar, throwing him a confused glance as she left.

He found Lord Eddard beside the granaries, listening to Vayon Poole monotonously reciting figures from a list. “Father,” he said, when Poole had finished speaking. “Can I speak with you?” 

His father turned and looked at him. His face was solemn and serious – his lord’s face, Bran called it. “What is it, Jon? How is your treasure hunt going?”

“Please may I speak with you?” He kept his tone as calm as he could, even though there was a screaming in his head so loud it threatened to overwhelm him. His father regarded him with a curious look, but nodded in assent. 

“Of course,” he said. “Come up to my solar. You look rather pale. Are you well?”

Jon did not answer. His head was awhirl with questions and thoughts and poisonous ideas – it was all he could do to keep the tears from budding in his eyes as Lord Eddard led the way up the steps and into his solar. He seated himself behind the great oak table and leaned forward, waving Jon to sit in a chair opposite.

At first he thought that he might speak, but then as he looked at his father, he realised that his tongue was tied. So, instead, he reached into the pocket of his breeches, drew out the letter and threw it onto the table. It skidded across the polished surface and came to a halt before Lord Eddard. 

Jon looked up. The expression on his father’s face told him everything. 

He knew. 

Slowly, painfully slowly, he picked up the letter and turned it over in his hands, his eyes centring on the broken seal. “How have you come to have this?” said his father. 

He did not unfold the paper, but merely looked up and fixed Jon with an intense stare. 

Flinching under the focus, Jon hesitated. And then it all came pouring out – the treasure hunt, Robb and Theon laughing as they walked across the courtyard, Arya delving through his desk drawers, the finding of the letter and how they had both thought that it was the next clue. By the time he had finished, Jon was crying, but his father had not moved an inch and his expression was unchanged. 

Wordlessly, Lord Eddard handed Jon a handkerchief which Jon then balled in his fist and squeezed at, instead of using it for its intended purpose. Hot embarrassment was coursing through him, mixed with anger, and a sense of betrayal such as he had never felt. How could his father have lied to him like this? How could he have let him believe that he was a Stark, his own blood, when he was nothing of the sort? 

He knew well the stories of what Rhaegar Targaryen had done to Lyanna Stark and the thought made him feel dirty.

“Jon, you were not meant to find this.”

“Not meant to find this? Why? Because you intended to keep it from me forever?” His voice was bitter and hollow and a fresh bout of tears filled his eyes. He blinked them back. 

“No… that was never my intention. Jon, I have never wished for you to be hurt by this. Your mother would not have wanted it that way.” 

“My mother?” He stood and stared in amazement. “I thought my mother was a whore! Or some camp follower! I’ve spent my whole life wondering who she was… why couldn’t you just have told me?”

“It was too dangerous.” 

_Dangerous?_ Right then, Jon did not understand how danger could have prevented the truth from being told. He was just angry, and he wanted to show this man he had called ‘father’ for twelve years just how angry he was. So he stood, his whole body shaking, and went to the door. “I hate you!” he shouted. If he had stayed to think for even half a heartbeat, instead of slamming the door and running headlong down the steps that led away from the solar, his resolve would have crumbled and he would have burst into tears once again and begged forgiveness. 

As it was, he made it out into the courtyard before the first sob quaked through him. One of the stable hands called his name in concern but he ignored the shout and carried on running.  
With his vision blurred by tears, he didn’t even see her until he barrelled straight into her. She stepped backwards with a surprised grunt and Jon skidded to a stop. Horror-struck, he looked up to see Lady Catelyn standing before him, a frown on her face. He shrank back. “What are you doing, charging around like a wildling?” she questioned. She seemed to notice then that he was crying, but there was little more than a flicker of sympathy in her eyes. 

“I-I’m sorry, Lady Stark, I… I did not see you there.” 

“No,” she replied, coldly. “You should watch where you are going, shouldn’t you?”

The anger had made him bold, though, and where he would normally have backed down and bowed his head and gone on his way, instead he drew himself up to his full height, sniffed back his tears and declared, “Why do you hate me so much? You think I’m his bastard, but I’m not. I’m nothing to do with him!” 

Catelyn Stark stared at him then, and the way her face paled made him feel suddenly very foolish. “What did you say?” she said, and her voice was very quiet indeed. 

He repeated his last words, but this time they trailed off into uncertainty. “I’m nothing to do with him…”

One of her eyebrows twitched downwards. Her lips parted ever so slightly. 

It was then that the realisation hit him, and it felt like a blow to the chest, sinking into him with such a sickening force he wondered if he wasn’t going to crumple to his knees. 

She didn’t know what he was talking about. She had no idea. 

He opened his mouth to add something more, but she grabbed him by his shoulders and he flinched. Her grip was hard. _“What do you mean?”_ she asked. There was no threat in her voice, nothing except a kind of desperation. Jon shrugged himself free from her hold. 

“I’m Rhaegar Targaryen’s bastard, not his. Lyanna Stark was my mother.” 

For a brief moment, he wondered if she was going to hit him or scream at him, such was the look of horrible shock on her face, but then she simply shook her head, turned and walked away from him, leaving him standing alone in the courtyard and feeling oddly empty.


	2. CATELYN

Catelyn did not see her husband that day until he came to bed as the summer light was fading into darkness. He had risen early and quietly in the morning before she had even stirred and gone out with a hunting party, and then he had been in his solar or meeting with the steward for most of the afternoon. 

After what Jon Snow had told her, she had not felt much like eating, so she had shut herself away in her chambers and not descended to join the household for dinner. She had thought she was doing the right thing in keeping away from him, for fear of showing her emotions in a public way that would have embarrassed both of them, but the time alone had given her shock and distress chance to turn into anger, and now she felt a simmering mix of fury, betrayal and hurt shifting beneath her skin. The longer she thought on it, the more it felt like it was changing her even as she sat, twisting and contorting her into something she barely recognised.

But even as she realised that she understood _why_ he had done it (a Targaryen princeling would not have been safe in Robert Baratheon’s realm), it was the lie that hurt the most. She had always believed Ned to be the most honourable of men – he avoided untruths, misliked others who used them, and instructed the children often about the importance of being honest. How could this man who seemed to abhor lies have deceived her for so long? And why? Was she not trustworthy? Did he think that she would betray him? The very thought was like a blade thrust through her heart. This man she had come to love so fiercely and trust so completely did not think the same things of her. 

And now that she knew, the whole thing seemed so obvious, and she cursed herself for never having worked out the truth of it on her own. The boy looked so much a Stark his very appearance had acted as a bluff. She had never known Ned as a child, but in her head, he had looked much like Jon Snow, with dark brown hair and eyes of grey. She had never known Lyanna Stark either, even though they were of a similar age, but she had heard the story the same as everyone else. She knew what had befallen Ned’s younger sister. 

She thought of all the restless nights she had lain awake thinking of Ashara Dayne, comparing her own modest looks with the spun tales of the most beautiful woman in the Seven Kingdoms. She thought of how many times she had imagined that Ned’s heart had been stolen by the Dornish girl, of how he had broken his vows with _her_ only to remain true to Catelyn thereafter. The only explanation she had been able to settle on had been love, and not the kind of love that they had built together, steady and unremarkable, but the sort of love that burned and burned and set the soul afire. Even now, after all these years, the thoughts were poisonous. The knowledge she had learned from Jon Snow had shown that those sleepless nights and worries had been misplaced. And that hurt. When you learn you have suffered for nothing, it somehow makes the suffering worse. She found herself wondering if perhaps it had been easier when all she’d known had been lies. It seemed ridiculous that she'd traded in a pack of lies for a pack of truth, but she couldn’t even say which one was heavier. Which one took the most strength to carry around? But even as she thought, she realised that the damage was done and there was nothing she could do to undo it. Heavier or not, the truth was hers now, and she would have to deal with it. 

So, when she heard his soft steps climbing the stair outside, and then the lift of the latch, she braced herself, knowing what seeing him would bring. 

Ned came into the room with his head down and the look of a black temper about him. He was not a man to act out his emotions, but over the years, Catelyn had learned to read his moods like a book. There was something more, though, she realised, as she watched him unbuckle his sword belt and remove the longsword and dirk and set them underneath the bed, as always. He seemed anxious. 

_He must know that I know_ , she thought. 

He straightened back up, and turned to look at her, sitting upright in the bed, her spine like a steel shank. She saw him swallow, but he made no move to say anything, or to even come towards her. Instead he simply stood, the bed marking the distance between them. Silence stretched, taut as whipcord. When she could bear it no longer, she shook her head and said, “Why did you lie to me?” 

She didn’t think she could deal with it if there was not some show of emotion then, and when he frowned she knew she had drawn something from him. “I promised Lyanna that I would keep him safe.” 

“You could have done that by leaving him with some of the smallfolk! He didn’t have to be raised as if he were your own son!”

“But if I’d done that, I could never have been sure.” He glanced away and his eyes were grey and haunted. “What if something had happened to him? I promised her.” He sighed. “And I did not wish for you to be drawn in.” 

For a moment, she thought he was going to say something else, but he closed his mouth and shifted his position instead. His words did not ease her anger, though, and she stared at him, open-mouthed, and shook her head. “Drawn in? I am your lady wife – of course I was going to be drawn in. And you swore a vow to me too, or do you not remember that one?” 

He looked pained at that. “Of course I do.”

“Then why would you lie to me?”

“Because I hardly knew you, Catelyn!” he exclaimed and for the first time, his voice cracked, and some vile part of her she never even knew existed, rejoiced at his distress. She _wanted_ him to feel what she was feeling. “We had spent little more than a week in one another’s company. I had no idea what your reaction might have been.” 

That much was true, she knew. They had not known each other, and could she really blame him for thinking of the worst that could have happened? Would she have done any different? And yet, it wasn’t that which bothered her the most – she could forgive him for that. But a lie is never just a lie, it is a stone that hits a pane of glass and sends shatters and fractures spiralling outwards. She was not so foolish that she could not see the necessity for the lie, but could she really forgive him for the pain it had caused, the nights of worry and heartache? For the silence he had continued to keep through all their years? “That was then. But what of now? We both know we have become more than that to one another. Am I still not to be trusted?” 

He did not answer and his silence made tears prickle in her eyes. _I will not cry_ , she thought. “I did what I thought was right,” he told her. “I had no other choice.”

“And neither did I,” she told him simply. “You took that from me. If you only knew of all the times I worried about what that boy might mean for Robb and our other children, how I thought of who his mother was, how I imagined that she had stolen your heart… how I compared myself to her and always found myself wanting…” 

“I never meant to hurt you,” he said. 

She swallowed back the lump in her throat and blinked back her tears. _I will not cry_. “But you did… You have.”

Ned said nothing to that, not an apology nor even an acknowledgement, but it was clear that he had heard enough. To anyone else, his face was blank, but to her, it showed resignation. He knew that there was nothing he could say to her then. 

“I’ll sleep in another room tonight,” he said. 

For a moment, as she looked on him, her conviction wavered. She did not want to sleep alone. But then she remembered the only time she dared to ask him of the boy and the way he had turned cold as ice on her and her nerves steeled once again. Right now, she needed him to know that she was hurt, to understand what he had done to her, and taking herself away from him was the only way she knew how. 

“Yes,” she told him. “I think that’s best.”

Ned hesitated, but then he nodded. “My lady,” he said and turned and left, and the door closed behind him with a dull thud. 

After he had gone, Catelyn sat still as stone in bed, staring at the place where he had stood. When she at last slipped down the bed, she found herself looking across at the empty space beside her, and it felt like she had gone back to the darker, early days of their marriage, when he kept his own chambers and came to her as nothing more than a visitor. She reached out and laid a palm flat on the cool sheet. Then without really thinking about it, she grabbed up one of his pillows and brought it to her chest. It smelt of him but it was colder than the grave.  
The anger she had felt just a few hours before was now an immense sadness and it suddenly overwhelmed her. She sobbed silently into his pillow.

It was deep into the night before she fell asleep. 

She was woken by the cold. Her fire had burned out, and when she rolled over, searching instinctively for Ned’s warmth, to find nothing but an empty bed and undisturbed blankets, the memories of the previous night came rushing back in a torrent. With a heavy heart, she climbed from the bed and called for her handmaids to help her dress and braid her hair. The girls seemed to know that something was amiss, and spoke barely a word as they went about their tasks. 

She broke her fast alone, thoughts crowding in her head while she picked at rye bread and fried bacon, then sought out her children. Arya and Sansa were at their books with Septa Mordane. Both girls stopped what they were doing when they saw her standing in the doorway. “Mother!” cried Arya, as grateful for the distraction as Catelyn was. Catelyn did not think her youngest daughter yet knew about what had come to pass, for doubtless there would be some reaction if she did. Arya had always been fond of Jon Snow. 

“Mother, look, I’m writing a story,” said Sansa, eager as always for praise and approval, and held up her beautiful manuscript. Catelyn took it and studied the perfectly formed letters and the perfectly horizontal lines. Sansa’s writing was neater than Catelyn’s had ever been. She handed it back and smiled. 

“Very good, sweetling.”

Sansa beamed. Arya, on the other hand, was not impressed. She pouted a moment and then stabbed her quill into the pot of ink, drawing it back out and showering her work with tiny drops of black. Septa Mordane scowled and tutted. Catelyn ignored the error. 

“And Arya, my girl, how are you doing?” 

Arya did not reply, but instead pressed the point of her quill onto her page and continued to write. Compared to Sansa’s, her handwriting was scratchy and slanting. Catelyn smiled. It was clear that her youngest daughter thought the entire task was tiresome; she had even doodled a little stick girl with messy hair and a hammer in her hand in the bottom right corner. 

“I’d rather do another treasure hunt. That was much more fun that stupid story-writing. Why can’t we do one?” Arya begged. 

“I don’t think it would be appropriate,” said Catelyn. She ran her hand over Arya’s hair to smooth it. “It’s probably best forgotten about.”

She left the girls to their studies, and followed the sound of laughter down to the yard. Robb was with Theon Greyjoy and Jon Snow and they were all practising with bow and arrow and targets, while Jory stood over them and critiqued them on their stance, aim and mark. She stood a distance away watching them for a moment, the easy smile on Robb’s face, the grin on Theon’s, and then the darkness in Jon Snow’s eyes. She frowned as she thought of how many times she had looked on his face and seen Ned in his features; now she wondered if she couldn’t see Rhaegar Targaryen in the shape of his eyes, in the litheness of his body. 

She must have made a sound, for all at once, all three boys looked in her direction. Robb grinned and Theon ducked his head in that slightly ingratiating manner he had whenever he was in her presence, but it was the look on Jon Snow’s face that drew her. 

They had long ago established their own routine, she and the boy, and it had mainly consisted of distance and a kind of deliberate overlooking of one another. It had seemed to work. But now she found herself meeting his gaze across the yard and finding something in it that spoke to her. It was an unfamiliar, and somewhat disconcerting, feeling. 

“Robb, Theon,” she greeted. “Are you having fun?”

“We’re just practising,” Robb told her, nocking another arrow and turning back to the target. She waited whilst he perfected his stance, then released, listening as the arrow hit the painted red circle in the middle of the target with a thwud sound. She crossed her arms in front of her. 

“Jon,” she said. “I would wish to speak with you. May I have a moment of your time? Alone.” 

Both Robb and Theon looked around at her words; the shock at her speaking to Jon Snow at all was apparent on their faces. To his credit, though, Jon simply nodded. He gave his bow and arrow to Jory and began to walk towards her. “Lady Stark,” he said when he was standing before her. There was something distant and formal about him which made him seem older than his twelve years. It was as if he had put away part of his personality. She turned and began to walk away. Briefly, she wondered if he would choose not to follow her, but then she heard his footsteps fall into pace beside her and knew that he had. 

They walked. 

For some reason, Catelyn felt a need to defend her husband to this boy. “I know why he did it.”

He stopped. They were in the lichyard that lay in the shadow of the ruin of the First Keep. Wreaths of fog drifted between headstones coated thickly by white hoar frost. It was quiet. Catelyn’s breath plumed out in front of her as she waited for him to respond. “He told me,” Jon Snow finally answered. “But that hardly makes it less hurtful, does it?” 

She could only shake her head at that. The truth hurts, said the old adage, and it had never seemed more hurtful than now. She glanced up at the crumbling walls, at the stiff-frozen ivy that insinuated itself over the stones and grappled at the mortar. A gargoyle peered grotesquely down at them, looking for all the world as if it were jeering at them. 

“All my life, all I wanted was to know,” he continued. “It wouldn’t have mattered if he had said my mother was a whore, or a camp follower, or some peasant girl he’d chanced upon and bedded because he liked her face. I just wanted to know.” He chuffed out a sorry sounding breath, as if the knowing had defeated him rather than given him what he had so desired. “But now that I know, I don’t know what to think. I used to think anything was better than what I had, but now I’m not so sure. I think maybe I was happier when I didn’t know. At least then I had someone I could call Father. Now all I have are ghosts and broken promises.” 

He leaned against the ancient wall and frowned into the near distance, looking at nothing in particular. Catelyn stood still with her hands twisted together. A long moment of silence passed. “I feel betrayed,” she said in a quiet voice, “and hurt.”

His agreement was a short hum. 

“I understand why, I just wish he could have trusted me with the knowledge. If not then, then now.” 

“And me too,” said Jon. 

He looked up at her then and she smiled. How strange it was to be standing here and finding a common cause with this boy she’d done her best to overlook and keep away from her for so long. “Who would have thought it, Jon?” she said softly. “The two of us able to talk like this after all these years.” 

He nodded. Slowly, he moved towards her and, quite unexpectedly, held out his hand to her. She stared at it and what it represented and then took it. “Mayhaps we should try to start again,” she told him. He looked down at their clasped hands. 

“I am sorry that I assumed…” His voice trailed away and his hand fell to his side. 

“You weren’t to know.” 

“No… but I am still sorry. You should have heard it from Lord Eddard, not me.” 

“As should you,” she replied.

“I am going to need some time to think about it all. But when I’ve done that… yes, mayhaps we should try again.”

And just like that, their conversation was over. Their eyes met once more and then they both turned and walked in opposite directions, she in the direction of the Great Keep, he towards the Godswood.


	3. EDDARD

Ned was tired. His bones ached with a weariness that seemed to begin somewhere in his toes and, as the day had gone on, had soaked all the way up to his temples. He wanted nothing more than to climb exhausted into his own bed, wrap the sheets and furs around him, pull Catelyn towards him, and sleep until morn. But all that was denied him, and instead he found himself sitting on the edge of one of the guest beds, staring around at a room that seemed as empty and cold as his own heart. 

He sighed. Three days of thick fog and freezing cold had passed since Jon had come to him in the yard and they had been three days of hopeless misery. Neither Jon nor Catelyn had spoken to him, and he had felt like an outcast within his own castle. It hadn’t taken the household long to realise that something was amiss and then the sidelong glances and whispered comments had begun. Some spoke of a rift between he and Catelyn, a heated argument that had been overheard by serving girls or chambermaids, depending on who was telling the tale, which had ended with Lady Catelyn refusing to speak to him ever again. He cared little for their whisperings – they could guess at the reasons for the next dozen years and still be unlikely to land upon the correct answer – but he cared about Catelyn, and he cared about Jon, and his thoughts had been full of them both for days. 

On his nightstand, the candle lighting the room with a feeble glow guttered in a draft blowing through a gap in the window. In the late afternoon, a gusty wind had swept away the fog which had hung like a shroud around the castle for days and now there was a storm brewing. Even that had made him think of Catelyn. She never liked it when the wind moaned through the gaps in the windows. If the wind was coming from the north, she would nestle up to him in bed as if he could somehow shield her from its chill. 

How he wished he had been able to shield her from all of this the same.

But there was little he could do now to change what had happened. It was done, and he would have to live with the consequences of it, just as he had lived with his lies for all these years. He recalled a story Old Nan used to tell when he was a boy, of a Liar Prince who had been made to wear a crown of brambles in penance for his sins. But when the time came for the crown to be removed, the Liar Prince found that the brambles had grown into his hair and rooted through his skin. Desperate to be free of his burden, he ripped it off, but the thorns tore into his flesh and left behind terrible scars for all the world to see forever and ever. The truth of the crib tale was a harsh one – Ned thought that he would also carry the scars of his own lies with him for the rest of his life. 

Each night he had slept alone, he had agonised about whether or not he should go to Catelyn, but each night he had decided against it. She needed time, just as Jon needed time, and if he hadn’t been able to respect their needs before, he would do so now. 

So instead he lay back down amid the cold furs and listened to the wind buffeting against the walls of the keep. He must have been on the edge of sleep when he heard the door creak open and he started awake with a jolt. The candle was still burning and in the light it cast he saw a figure standing in the doorway, dressed in a blue nightgown. Instantly, he knew it was Catelyn. Her hair hung loose about her shoulders and shone in the flickering light like beaten copper. He sat up. “Cat?” he questioned, blinking the dryness in his eyes away. 

She didn’t say a word. Her hands were lost in the long dagged sleeves of her nightgown and her feet were bare. She walked slowly towards him until she was standing right beside the bed, looking at him. Her face was paler than the moon that swam outside the window. “There’s a storm outside,” she murmured eventually. 

“Yes,” he said. It seemed somehow appropriate that finally the stagnant fog and ice of the last few days was being swept away by such a tempest. He stared at her, wondering if she was going to say anything else. 

“You hurt me,” she said after a long moment. Her eyes were suddenly full of tears and Ned felt a hand close around his heart and squeeze. 

“Yes.” 

“Don’t ever do it again.”

“No…” He knelt up on the bed before her. “I wish I could make you believe me when I say that I never wanted to hurt you.” He shook his head and thought of all the times he had wished things could have been different, of all the pleas he had made to his gods.

Her tears spilled over. “I know,” she said in a voice barely above a whisper and it sounded like forgiveness. He prayed it was. Ned lifted his hands to her face and cradled it. He used his thumbs to wipe away the moisture on her cheeks. 

“You have always been my lady,” he told her and kissed her. 

Catelyn sobbed in snatches against his mouth even as she sagged into his embrace, clutching desperately at him, as if he was a rock amid turbulent rapids and she was in danger of being swept away from him. He kissed her again, then pressed his forehead to hers and threaded his fingers through her hair, pushing it back from her face. Her hand was on the back of his neck. Another kiss, and another, then he pulled back and looked at her. Her eyes were bright with tears, her bottom lip quivered. “Come here.”

He took her hands in his and tugged her onto the bed. Oftentimes he wished he could put his feelings into words, but whenever he tried, they always sounded a pale imitation of what he wanted them to be, and so he had learned to stop trying. Instead, he hoped she could see enough in his actions and his eyes to know how valuable she was to him, and how much he thought of her. He laid her down on the bed, still kneeling above her, and studied her. The tears had slowed now and as he reached out a hand to smooth her hair back, she leaned into his touch. 

It was all the acceptance he needed. The last three days had reminded him of what his life was like without her and he did not wish to prolong them. He knelt between her legs, his hands ghosting over her shoulders and her arms and around the swell of her breasts before venturing down across her belly. Through the thin material of her nightgown, he saw her nipples harden, and after the turmoil of the last few days, the knowledge that he could still stir a physical response from her with little more than touch was comforting. 

His hands crept underneath her nightgown, and he ran them over her hips, giving her a tug so she was pulled further down the bed towards him. He pushed her nightgown up until it was bunched around her waist and then he leaned forward and kissed the soft curve of her belly. His lips traced the marks left there by their children, the oldest, Robb’s, were silvery grey and well faded, but the ones left by Rickon were still angry red. 

He slipped downwards. He kissed each hipbone in turn, and then ghosted around the hair on her mound. His breath on her made her twist, arching up towards him. When he laid his tongue against her, she flinched, letting out a tiny squeak of surprise. He held her still while his tongue played against her, while he sucked and stroked, tasting her, and then suddenly, much more quickly than he had imagined, she was coming, and her hands were grasping at his shoulders. He kept up his ministrations and he listened to her cry of pleasure sound out loud in the quiet room.

When he lifted his head, she looked at him, and then her hands were reaching for him, pulling him up towards her so that she could kiss him deeply. It was enough to make him glad again. 

He pushed inside her with a gentleness that made him recall their first night together, hesitating as her face contorted briefly at the sensation of him filling her up and only beginning to move when she met his eyes and smiled at him. She was warm and slick as he thrust into her, his face pushed into the crook of her neck, breathing deep of the familiar scent there. Her leg hooked around the small of his back and drew him closer. When he felt the gathering beginning in him, he reached between their bodies and pressed his fingers into her sex and stroked steadily and hard. In his arms, Catelyn let out a moan, and then she was coming again and the waves of her climax pushed him over the edge into oblivion. 

Once she had stilled, he laid himself down in shadow of her and pulled her body close to his, the weight of her a comfort against him. For a long while she was silent, but then just as sleep was threatening to take him again, she whispered, “Let there be an end. Promise me that there will be an end, Ned.”

Her words rang loudly in his ears and sent him back a dozen years to a tower and a sky stained red on blue, to Lyanna in her bed of blood and three men in white cloaks. _Promise me, Ned,_ she had begged. And he had done so, without realising the price he would pay, the price they would all pay, for his words. He looked down at this woman whom he had loved for almost as many years as his sister had lived and realised that he owed her nothing less. Let the past be gone, he often told the men he governed, and he realised now that he had never done so himself. 

“I promise you,” he said. 

The following morning dawned bright and fresh, the storm gone and replaced by a gentle breeze and a clear sky. She had watched him dress from the bed, hair splayed across the pillows in a red fan, and he had gone to her and kissed her again, grateful beyond words for her forgiveness. But there was still a part that was not yet fixed, and he knew he must do so before he could keep his promise to her. 

And so he left her there in the bed and descended to the Godswood. On the way, he stopped and bid the boy he had called ‘son’ these last twelve years to come with him. Jon was surprised to see him, he could tell, but he did as he was told and followed him. As always, it was quiet in the Godswood, and only the chatter of forest birds filled the air. The weirwood rose high above their heads as they stood beneath its reaching white limbs and blood-red leaves. Ned took up his customary seat upon the great granite rock that lay before the heart tree, and for a long moment, watched the solemn face carved into its bark. A few paces away, Jon stood silent, his hands knotted behind his back, and his gaze fixed on the ground. “Speak, Jon,” he said at length. “Say what is on your mind. I would hear it.” 

“And then what?” Jon asked. His voice was dull and tired, weighted down with sadness. “Will anything be changed?” 

Ned angled his head a touch. The boy had always been intelligent, wiser and more reserved than Robb had ever been, and Ned found himself thinking for the first time in years of Rhaegar Targaryen and his bookish habits. Could the seed be so strong as to make itself be seen in ways other than the face and body? “No, it won’t,” Ned allowed, “but it might make your burden less.” 

“Less or more, I shall carry it with me forever.” Jon sighed. “Everything I believed was a lie. My whole life, my whole identity. You must have known how that would hurt me…” 

“And you must understand what might have happened had I not shielded you in this way.” 

“Oh, I do,” said Jon. “But that does not change how I feel now.” 

“How do you feel?”

There was a pause. Ned could feel the tension knifing the air. He knew he was forcing the issue, but as Catelyn had said, there had to be an end, and he would have that end, whatever the cost. “Lost, betrayed, unsure of my own self.”

“Your mother loved you, so much she made me swear an oath to keep you safe before she died,” Ned told him. “And your father was no rapist – he simply loved your mother more than he loved his own honour. Much and more has been said of what happened, but that much is true.” He stood and took the boy by his shoulders. “And you are my blood and always will be.”

Jon looked up at him and Ned saw that his grey eyes were glassy with tears. His heart went out to this boy who had, with a single promise, gained his life and lost a crown. Not for the first time, guilt puckered at his soul. It all came down to a duel between honour and love, he thought. Both were cruelly sharp blades, but sometimes the cruellest of all was love. Jon had been loved so much and yet he had still been hurt. “But you are not my father,” said Jon, and as he spoke, the tears poured free. 

“Not in truth, no. But too many years have passed for me – I cannot shed that role so easily, Jon.” Jon stared at him, as if Ned’s words had come as a surprise to him. His mouth opened and a frown patterned across his brow. “And you are your own man. You are almost grown now and you can choose your own identity.” 

He held out his hand to Rhaegar Targaryen’s son, to Lyanna’s blood, and thought of all the sacrifices he had made to ensure this boy had had the chance to grow up into a man. “You have a lot of choices ahead of you, Jon. Should you want my help or my guidance, I will gladly give it, but the choices are yours now.” 

A moment passed, then Jon Snow, instead of taking Ned’s hand, threw himself into his arms and embraced him. Surprised, Ned staggered backwards a step at the vehemence of the gesture, but closed his arms around the boy’s back and returned his embrace. 

When they parted, a nervous smile broke on Jon’s face. For all his seriousness and brooding silence, he seemed suddenly very boyish and innocent. Ned looked down at him.  
“So, shall we let there be an end?” asked Ned. “The truth is out, and the way is forward now.” 

Jon nodded. “Yes,” he said. “Let there be an end.” He turned to the heart tree. Ned did the same and together they whispered the words of a familiar prayer, passed down through generations of Starks since the Age of Heroes. As they concluded and looked on one another again, each of them smiling, Ned realised that when things are held together with love, sometimes they can never really come apart at all. 

 

The End.


End file.
